With joy and wonder, hailing from afar,
Through polar storms, the light of Jacob's star."
The internal arrangements of the establishment are just the same as at all their settlements. The chapel, very much like a Friends' meeting, only having an organ; and the bedrooms of the children as large, ventilated from the roof, and furnished with the same rows of single, curtainless beds, with white coverlets, reminding you of the sleeping-rooms of a nunnery.
My reception, though I took no introduction, was most kind and cordial. The brethren and sisters were well acquainted with the writings of both Mrs. Howitt and myself, and, of course, with our visit to Herrnhut. They have here about seventy boys and fifty girls, as pupils, who had just returned from the midsummer holydays, and were, many of them, very busy in their gardens. As I heard their merry voices, and caught the glance of their bright, eager eyes among the trees, I wondered how many would look back hereafter to this quiet, sweet place, and exclaim, with the poet who first met the muse here—
"Days of my childhood, hail!
Whose gentle spirits wandering here,
Down in the visionary vale
Before mine eyes appear,
Benignly pensive, beautifully pale:
O days forever fled, forever dear,